Feb 4, 2014

Huawei has staggered its device announcements over the course of CES 2012, beginning with the unveiling of the super-slim Ascend P1 and P1 S and ending today with an LTE version of the phone. The family all have similar specifications, and represent the most powerful phones the Chinese manufacturer has released to date.

It’s the Ascend P1 S that’s the standout model of the three, thanks to an astonishingly slim chassis measuring just 6.68mm. Forget the Galaxy S II, the iPhone 4/4S and even the Droid RAZR, with the P1 S Huawei has grabbed the “world’s slimmest smartphone” crown and now confidently wears it at a jaunty angle, knowing this figure is going to be tough to beat.

The phone is dominated by a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED touchscreen with a 540 x 960 pixel resolution, and the whole thing is powered by a dual-core 1.5Ghz processor, 1GB of RAM and a PowerVR graphics chip.

Google Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich comes already installed, and there’s an 8-megapixel camera with 720p video recording on the rear, plus a 1.3-megapixel video-call lens around the front. The feature list is rounded out with GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0, 4GB of internal memory and a microSD card slot.

There are two variants of the Ascend P1 S, named the P1 and the P1 LTE. While the P1 LTE is exactly the same as the P1 S aside from the 4G LTE radio inside, while the standard Ascend P1 has a 1mm thicker chassis than its record-beating sister device.

According to FierceWireless.com, Huawei is in talks with US carriers and is hopeful of a launch before the end of the summer. In Europe however, the P1 S is ready for a March release. Pricing will be set at that time, but expect a tag of around $400 in the USA before any network discounts are applied.